Hey now, I’ve never denied being suss!

There are some ensigns, but lieutenants are still suspiciously missing!

I… that… it… you see, I…

[ahem]

Excuse me for a moment.

THEY’RE ONTO ME

Sadly, while I used to be told I looked like Jesus when I wore my hair long, my hair is neither long at this time nor am I in current possession of a pug due to apartment limitations. 😔

Apologies for the Americentrism (and poor quality editing lmao), but "I don’t believe that user has ever been to a military academy" just didn’t hit the same for me.

Even when it’s just irregular contribution, it’s such a relief to know you aren’t the only one who cares enough to post.

we don’t have enough activity for a thriving community on our own, so we have to pick-and-choose who we federate with. Too closed and the community dies.

Oh sure, that’s why the announcement is about looking for someone to take over.

Most people would not presume that there’s someone waiting in the wings willing to take up a thankless job and pay a regular fee for the privilege over a small hobby project.

I’m not disputing that it’s desirable to acquire the server and perpetuate it over starting a new one, my point is only that the admin no longer being able to hold up the burden is hardly an act of spite.

And “fuck yourselves” is explicitly how several websites I care about have disappeared.

Okay, but as I said, that’s hardly the tone or implication here.

I mean there may be legal questions about transferring ownership.

As for price, the question then arises - who is offering to pay for it?

Maybe if you reach out to the admin, they’d be happy to transfer it to you. I don’t know how these things work or the admin’s opinions. But the admin saying “It’s been good guys, but it’s too expensive and not what I hoped for, so I’ll keep it up for this last lease period and then let it go” is hardly a declaration of “Go fuck yourselves, I’m just burning everything down”

There may be legal questions, but also, they mentioned that the price of keeping it running was a factor.

I legitimately think that a relatively small but overwhelmingly leftist proportion of the userbase leaving had a very negative effect both on actual discourse, and on what third-parties find productive to push there.

The Fediverse has its flaws, but it’s also better than the alternatives.

Such is human existence - seeking improvements, never finding utopia.

Some poor judgement from admins, essentially, combined with… ambiguous policies.

It’s not something like “Holocaust denial”, but a big kerfluffle with them refusing to remove a particularly bad mod, and especially pussyfooting around the issue for the longest time, giving contradictory or vague answers as to what they were doing, has damaged faith in the admins pretty severely, and it’ll take time for they to win it back - assuming them do so.

I went into the comments section a few times since, as an observer. Whole place has shifted right, hard.

I hear you, but I also believe that the balance you describe is size-independent. If the fediverse consisted of only three people, and one was an asshole, what’s to gain from allowing that asshole to run rampant on your platform if you’re trying to attract non-assholes to your anti-asshole platform? There is no scenario where that doesn’t lead to burnout.

I mean, the amount of media on a platform one consumes certainly adjusts the amount of bullshit on a platform one is willing to endure. I don’t think it’s size-independent.

It all depends on one’s interests. If I was primarily a lurker, like I was back on The Old Place, I probably wouldn’t find enough historical content to keep me invested in the Fediverse, for example.

I don’t think that the admin is talking about the process of administrating their own instance when they talk about being disappointed with the Fediverse, but about their own user experience as a user of the Fediverse.

They want to browse and comment and doomscroll too. As it stands, they find that there’s no instance or comms with the correct ‘balance’ of quantity and quality (or, at least, morality), and they don’t see any immediate solution or combination of federations that would fix that, for their experience.

I believe it’s more about the Fediverse as a whole, not the instance they were running. No instance is an island, and all that - we don’t have enough activity for a thriving community on our own, so we have to pick-and-choose who we federate with. Too closed and the community dies. Too open and you can become overwhelmed by bad faith actors. At some point, it may be that you just decide that you can’t find the balance, or that the balance isn’t attainable in your position.

It’s a thankless job, being an unpaid admin. I absolutely sympathize with Rikudou_Sage’s position.

I mean, it takes all kinds to make an internet ecosystem! Where would we be if not for our bold predecessors, trading blurry pics of penises on usenet?

I just hope the instance’s admins are ready for the influx of folk.